Category Archives: i like gambling

The short road to diamond


Posted by avoque

The first time I got my diamond card it was a long, painful process. The second year I gambled so much between Tahoe, Vegas (twice) and multiple AC trips that it wasn’t even a question. But this year it was looking like I wouldn’t even get to platinum status. But much like the apartment I pay way too much for, once I get used to something there’s no going back for me. So the options were either to stop gambling or find a way to get 9000 tier points FAST.

Luckily my fellow craps addict Heather already had the solution for me. Video Poker. All I had to do was learn how to play. So I went back to my favorite gambling website, wizardofodds.com, and started reading Jacks or Better strategy. It’s actually much easier than I expected it to be and within a couple hours I was making no mistakes on the java simulator.

Armed with my new VP knowledge, I headed down to AC determined to get my diamond card. I went with $5 VP because it’s in the high limit room. The high limit room is fucking amazing. Good drink service, no crowds and a private bathroom. But there’s a whole other world when you play VP that I had never noticed. All the good machines were taken and there was no sign that these people would be leaving any time soon. I went to the craps table to wait it out. Finally at 4am it opened up. I was already smashed but still remebered the rules fairly well. I put on my headphones and quickly got into a rythm. Four hours later I had all the points I needed and I was up so it was time to get the hell out of there. But I didn’t want to. VP is awesome-no idiots slowing the game down, no one smashing themselves up next to you or asking stupid questions. Just you and the game. And you can make it as fast or as slow as you want. It still doesn’t beat hitting four (or more) points for the fire bet in craps, but it is definitely a new kind of awesome.

The only downside is that when you hit a jackpot ($1250), you have to wait so they can fill out a W-2G, so now I have figure out how to deal with it when I do my taxes. It’s a small price to pay though.


thanks for holding my money for me


Posted by avoque

In a fitting end to my month of recruiting travel I once again found myself paying for bud lights at the horseshoe outside chicago. the place was packed, much busier than last time I was there. we had a hard time getting in to a table, but eventually got settled in to a $15 craps table. Once again I drew the amateur night table. the worst part was that it was the same dealer as last time. If you can’t start to grasp craps dealing after 160 hrs of working the table; it’s time to start looking into other career options.

this was easily the slowest game of craps I’ve ever played, but much like sitting in traffic, I was sure that if I tried to move to another table I would have to wait another half hour for a table that probably had dealers of comperable quality.

Oh and another aside: attention craps players: fuck you and all of your complicated prop/hop bets. Seriously, if you can’t figure out what you should be paid, quit using that fucking strategy. Yes, the dealers are slow, but you are making the problem worse when five of you are only making prop bets. I fucking hate all of you.

And one more thing. If your pre-roll ritual takes a long time, it better fucking stay on the table.

I love gambling.

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the horseshoe


Posted by avoque

it has been a long time since I went to a new casino. last month I got a random phone call from Heather, where she explained that Harrah’s was opening a new (remodeled, I believe) Horseshoe near Chicago. I was jealous, and she knew I would be, hence the random phone call.

I had the oppotunity to go a couple last week and I can’t say I was dissapointed. The casino itself is Nice. I have only been to the Hollywood in Auraura previously and this place definitely blows it away. The worst thing about the casino was the fact that you have to pay for drinks, but I’m quickly becming accustomed to it with other indian casinos. It still sucks though.

Both nights I played I stuck with craps, for better or worse. The minimums were decent ($10 = nice) and I’m not sure what the caps was on odds, but I never exceeded it. My first night was marred by what were probably the worst craps dealers I have ever played with. We are talking worse than Resorts in AC.

The second night when I caught up with Heather we had a much better table, though the minimums were up to $15. We had an awesome exchange with some drunks kids that were at the table with us. I finally got to use my extensive knowledge of “Don’t tell mom, the babysitter is dead”. I knew that would come in handy at some point.

All in all the casino experience was good. I will definitely be visiting again next time I go to Chicago; and who knows, I might even play in their fantastic looking poker room.

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile


Celebrating Jesus at the Casino


Posted by avoque

Easter weekend was surprisingly light in AC. I guess there are more devout C&E Catholics here than I expected.

I headed out once again with the same couple I went with on Chinese New Year. At the last minute, they talked a friend into going and driving with us. Now I’m not one to envy cars, but when the car is  BMW M5, you can’t help but envy its awesomeness. That car is sick.  Pair it with a crazy driver (crazier than Chinese New Year) and I really thought I was going to die. But I couldn’t help but admire the handling of the car. Unbelievable.

I learned a few things on this trip:

  1. 10/20 Limit is unbelievably soft.  Now I know why F-Train goes on about it all the time.  I had the best time I’ve had playing poker in over a year playing the 10/20 game.  I will hit it again soon.
  2. I find myself playing higher limits in the table games just to get away from the douche-iness that always seems to find its way to me at craps and blackjack tables.
  3. Deep tissue massage is where it’s at.  At the Borgata ask for Sue, she’s amazing.
  4. If you stay in your hotel room past 4pm you will automatically be charged for a second day.  Luckily I talked them into comping the room for me so I didn’t have to pay the $300 for a night we didn’t even spend in the hotel room.

Chinese New Year’ed


Posted by avoque

Or alternatively titled, “AC by way of Philadelphia”.
For my Chinese New Year AC trip I hooked up with some friends from work who happened to be going as well, which was awesome because they let me stay in their room on Saturday night so I didn’t have to suffer the late night Saturday bus ride back. To make it even better, we all chipped in and got a rental car, so I didn’t have to ride the bus at all.

Unfortunately, we didn’t do so well in the directions department (obviously not my fault) and we ended up missing the garden state parkway and took the nj turnpike the whole way. Our driver was a fucking maniac though so even with a stop for coffee we still made it in record time. Gold. I headed over to the Borgata and played craps, blackjack and poker until I couldn’t see anymore. Aahhhh home.

Saturday I decided it was time to get some value out of these comps and splurged on the massage/spa. Totally worth it. Not the best massage I’ve ever received, but good nonetheless. It probably would have been better if I weren’t already 6 drinks in. I do have to air a complaint about the spa though. The spa would be awesome if it weren’t for all the full frontal nudity. Seriously guy-getting-out-of-the-shower, I don’t need you to tell me how awesome the spa is while you are drying off your balls. In fact, I don’t need to talk to you at all. Save the conversation for a time when you’re wearing clothes.

I actually played poker with no success this trip. I really need to get my shit together and start playing more poker. And better poker too, this is getting ridiculous. I’m not even winning online anymore. Spanish 21 did me well this trip though, so I managed to squeeze out a winning trip for once.

I was actually disappointed at the Asian turnout at the Borgata this year. Last year I spent Chinese New Year at Caesars, which draws a much bigger Asian crowd. The Borgata didn’t even run any specials for it, likely because their customer-base generally consists of a bunch of kids pretending to be guidos. I love the Borgata, but I think I’m going to have to go back to Caesar’s for CNY next year.


Lake Tahoe x-mas


Posted by avoque

Oh yeah, I went to Lake Tahoe for x-mas. It is absolutely gorgeous there as you can see. I went with Jason, Balki, and Ezra. Here’s the trip in notable quotes:

“You are a bottle of jack away from closing that deal.”

“You need to start having sex with strangers.”

“I am a serial monogamist.”

“No matter what, Dan would tell you that he would have hit that.”

“Did you do that skiing?”

“I feel like every time I take a trip with you I lose a year off my life.”

“This place smells like strippers.”

“I want to see the crutches work their magic.”

“So, are you into guys or girls?”

“It looks like Montbleu only brought out the starters.”

“In chinatown they call that a ‘rucky nickel’”

“I don’t see myself staying away past six am.”

A more coherent write-up another time.


Craps for poker players


Posted by avoque

I play a lot of craps. If I start playing craps and I’m winning (or within a reasonable amount of losses) I’d rather keep playing than change games to get some poker in.

The Borgata is currently holding a big poker tournament (WPT Poker Open). To catch some of the action walking out of the poker room, the forward-thinking staff at the Borgata added an extra craps table in the secret smoke-free craps table spot outside the poker room.

That would be fine, I like to play poker, so having more poker players at my table shouldn’t be an issue, right? Wrong. I hate most poker players, and I didn’t even realize it. But it is definitely clear to me now

Craps rules for poker players

  1. No one wants to hear your bad beat stories. Most of the time they aren’t even bad beats. Some guy calling your all-in with a set of aces against your inside straight draw isn’t a bad beat, no matter where you are in the casino.
  2. Stop using “I don’t know how to play this game, I’m a poker player!” as your excuse for fucking up over and over again. You may think you are insulting craps for being -EV, but what you are really doing is making poker players look like jackasses to people that don’t play poker. Making a mistake is acceptable, consistently making a mistake is jackassery.
  3. Don’t talk about what constitutes a loss while the game is going on. To put it in poker terms, it’s like shouting for an ace when your friend is all-in with a pair of queens against AK. Craps is a superstitious game and we don’t need your retarded attitude fucking up the table mojo.
  4. Don’t argue with the dealers. Just like with every other game in the casino (including poker, fuck-o) dealers have no incentive to make you lose. In fact, they’re all hoping you win because that’s generally the only way you’ll tip them.
  5. Tip your dealers! Especially if you are too fucked up to understand how the game works, these people are helping you more than the waitress is. I’m not saying you have to tip a lot, but at a minimum, throw them a couple bucks when you cash out.
  6. Don’t walk away with an active bet on the table. I’m not sure why this happens all the time, because it seems like it should be common knowledge. 
  7. Color up when you leave the table. you’ll notice there are no chip racks at the craps table. When you are finished playing, tell the dealer you want to “color up”, he will instruct you to set your money down, the boxman will count it and give you larger denomination chips so you don’t have to walk around with 100 $5 chips.  This is true for almost every table game in the casino.

That’s it.  Good luck and I’ll see you at the tables (but if I do, please follow these rules or kill yourself, either is acceptable for me).


Viva Las Vegas


Posted by avoque

Kat and I made it out to Las Vegas for the first time in forever (Dec. 2005 to be exact) for a wedding. Everyone was already staying at the Flamingo, so we decided to stay at the same hotel as the rest of the group. Jim and Adrienne were coming to the wedding too so we split our room with them.

I wasn’t particularly excited to be staying at the Flamingo, but I was definitely excited that the Flamingo is a Harrah’s property and I recently got to diamond status so I was going to take advantage of all of the benefits that membership had to offer. No more waiting in the long line at the baggage check, taxi stand, cashier, buffet, or even the front desk. There were a few times that it really paid off too. Like skipping the 30-person deep line at the Caesar’s buffet on Thursday afternoon, or skipping the taxi line in the middle of the afternoon; minutes count when it’s 110 degrees outside and I know Jim and Adrienne appreciated not having to wait for five other groups to get their shit together before getting in their cab to go back to the airport. But the best of all had to be when we tried to eat dinner at the Italian restaurant in the Flamingo on Saturday night at 8:30pm. The place was pretty crowded and a couple in front of us was told that the wait for a table would be anywhere between 5-25 minutes. When I got to the hostess stand and presented my diamond card, there was suddenly available seating in a comfortable booth. I am drunk with power.

Unfortunately no matter how drunk with power I get, my name will still be spelled wrong, even when it is spelled right on the fucking card I handed them:

Caesar’s buffet


Paris buffet

Fuckers.

The gambling didn’t work out too well for us this time. As a matter of fact, it was downright brutal. I think I only had a couple of winning sessions (that’s positive at all) over the course of four days. Rough. I didn’t play any poker though because honestly there really wasn’t enough time to sit for an extended period of time and get some good playing in since we were there for a wedding and wanted to see people more than we wanted to get full-on gambling done so we only played craps and blackjack.

The wedding was nice, but I was in a poor physical state for most of Friday. Most everyone got into Vegas on Thursday night, so we did a lot of drinking that night. A lot. I got Jim so drunk that I convinced him to play craps with us. It was around 5am so there was plenty of room at the table to get him in. In his first go at it, Jim had an amazing roll. He was the only person that I saw make the minimum fire bet requirements, making the 4, 6, 8, and 9 points. He crapped out rolling for the 5. Two more points and he would have been worth a $1000.

Unfortunately the late-night drinking/gambling spree meant that I felt like complete ass the next day (also known as “the wedding day” or “the reason we flew five hours in the first place”). It was odd. I woke us all up at 11:00am and demanded that everyone get up and start getting ready for the 1pm wedding. I was in a panic. Kevn had told me that the chapel had some crazy rules about people showing up late and I definitely didn’t want to miss it. I took a shower first, got my clothes together, found extra towels for everyone, and started ironing my shirt. That’s when it hit me how hung-over I really was. Halfway through ironing my shirt I had to lie down in bed and concentrate on not throwing up. I manned up and made it through the ceremony. By the time we got to the Rio for lunch, I was really starting to feel better. Unfortunately, I wasn’t better and I had to stop mid-sentence to urgently find a bathroom. I didn’t make it all the way there. Instead, I left a present in the trash can outside the men’s bathroom. I still contend that I was just nervous about the wedding. Or it might have had something to do with the water I was drinking, it had gone bad. Or maybe I was just overheated. I hear heat exhaustion can lead to sickness. On the other hand, it might have been the whiskey. It tasted a bit sour, maybe it had gone bad. I’m sure that’s it.